Google Season of Docs 2024 Proposal

Improve Nightwatch.js Guide and API docs

About Nightwatch.js

Nightwatch.js is an open-source integrated testing framework powered by Node.js and using the W3C Webdriver API. It provides a complete testing solution and can be used for a wide range of testing needs, including:

• End-to-end testing of web applications and websites on both desktop and mobile devices.
• Component testing in isolation (React / Vue / Storybook / Angular).
• Unit testing, Visual Regression testing, Accessibility testing, and API testing. * Native mobile app testing on Android & iOS.

Started in 2014, Nightwatch.js has managed to build an active and engaging community around itself, with around 1.5k community members on Discord server, 11.7k GitHub stars and 1.3k forks.

About our project

The Problem

Nightwatch.js is widely used by front-end developers and QA teams for their testing needs and in the past few years Nightwatch.js has managed to deliver a lot of new features, which were welcomed positively by the community, but unfortunately the documentation was not able to keep pace with it. Due to this, the current documentation of Nightwatch.js is outdated and incomplete, with many new features not documented properly, which makes it difficult for users to get started with the project and for contributors to understand how to contribute effectively.

Improving the documentation for Nightwatch.js is critical to the success of the project and its community. We believe that participating in the Google Season of Docs program will provide us with the resources and support we need to get our documentation at par with the actual project, which would lead to more user adoption and satisfaction and will help take the project to the next level.

Project scope

With Google Season of Docs, the main goal of this project is to improve the documentation for Nightwatch.js to make it more accessible and useful to users and contributors. Specifically, we aim to achieve the following goals:

• Ensure that the Guide and API documentation is accurate and up-to-date
• Expand the existing documentation to cover more topics and use cases
• Fill gaps in the current documentation to provide a comprehensive overview of the project
• Improve the organization and structure of the documentation to make it easier to navigate
• Develop a style guide to ensure consistency across all documentation
• Publish a few blogs to tackle the major pain-points of users

Benefits

This project will benefit Nightwatch.js and its users in several ways:

• Users will have access to comprehensive, up-to-date documentation that will help them get started with the project and use it effectively.
• Contributors will have a better understanding of the project and how to contribute to it, which will help to increase the number and quality of contributions.
• The project will become more accessible to new users and contributors, which will help to grow the community and increase the project's impact.
• The project team will have a comprehensive and consistent set of documentation, which will make it easier to maintain and update the documentation in the future.

Skills required

We are looking for a technical writer with the following skills:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Experience in technical writing and documentation
• Familiarity with markup languages such as Markdown or reStructuredText
• Comfortable with Git, Github and pull request-driven workflows
• Ability to work independently and collaborate effectively with the mentor and project team

How would we measure success?

Being an open-source project with an active community around it, we rely on our queries or support requests raised in the community as well as certain analytics to measure the success of a project. For this particular project, we'll measure our success on the following basis:

• The content as well as the examples in the Guide and API docs of Nightwatch.js are accurate and up-to-date, resulting in minimal complaints from the users.
• Reduction in the queries raised by users that could have been easily answered by proper documentation.
• Reduction in the support requests where users get stuck while trying out a new feature.
• Increased adoption of the new features shipped by Nightwatch.js in the past few years, measured using analytics.
• Increase in number of daily visitors to the Nightwatch.js Guide and API docs.

Timeline

Dates	Action Items
May	Orientation: Get to know the team and familiarize yourself with the project. Research and review the existing documentation to identify areas that need improvement.
June	Update Nightwatch.js API docs to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date with all examples working.
July - September	Go through the Guide docs and improve its organization and structure. Revamp the contents and examples ensuring consistency and clarity throughout the docs. Add new documentation whenever required to fill any gaps and cover more topics and use-cases.
October	Write and publish a few blogs to ease out the major pain-points of users while using Nightwatch.js
November	Develop a documentation style guide to ensure consistency across all documentation.

Project Budget

Budget item	Amount	Running total
Technical writer	$5000	$5000
TOTAL		$5000

Getting started

Technical writers interested in working on this project can reach out to us by following the below steps:

• Join Nightwatch.js Discord community server.
• Introduce yourself in the #welcome channel and state your interest in the project.
• Familiarize yourself with the Nightwatch.js project and feel free to shoot your queries in the #development-team channel.

Contact info

@garg3133 and @AutomatedTester would be the main point of contact for this project and can be found easily on our Discord community server.